Blige received a special jury award for best ensemble for “Mudbound,” in which she plays the matriarch of a poor farming family in the 1940s.

Already a music icon, Blige thanked director Dee Rees, saying, “She offered me the role. And when someone offers you a role and you don’t have to read [or audition], and don’t have to worry about anything but getting your acting coach and getting prepared, it just makes you go harder and love that person more.”

Speaking to Rees, Blige said, “What you actually did when you created Florence is that you exposed something in me that I needed, and that was a whole other level of confidence.”

Blige previously told Variety, “I used a lot of my own heaviness from my own misery that I was living in that horrible marriage.”